Exodus 21:1 - 21:11

Judgments About Slaves

“Now these are the judgments which you are to set before them: 2 “If you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve for six years; but on the seventh he shall go out as a free man without payment. 3 If he comes alone, he shall go out alone; if he is the husband of a wife, then his wife shall go out with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife, and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall belong to her master, and he shall go out alone. 5 But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out as a free man,’ 6 then his master shall bring him to God, and he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost. Then his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him permanently. 7 “And if a man sells his daughter as a female slave, she is not to go free as the male slaves do. 8 If she is displeasing in the eyes of her master who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed. He does not have authority to sell her to a foreign people because of his treachery to her. 9 And if he designates her for his son, he shall do to her according to the custom of daughters. 10 If he takes for himself another woman, he may not reduce her food, her clothing, or her conjugal rights. 11 And if he will not do these three things for her, then she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.

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